r e : v o l t is an homage and a tribute to Revolt, an amateur film made in 1977 in Skopje, Macedonia, by Stefan Sidovski. While the film did earn itself some recognition in the then, this project sees no need to shower it with prizes and honors now: its form of homage and tribute is to transform it into a locus of r e : reproduction, reinvestment, reenactment, revisitation. Its form of homage and tribute is to create a platform that allows it to continue to centrifugally keep spreading its energy, its freshness and its passion. Revolt is an amateur film, that is, a film made solely out of love. This, r e : v o l t wants to keep intact – it considers the love of making more noble than any kind of acclaim or professionalism. It is a tribute to the powerful act of making things out of love.

To r e : v o l t can be two things: to rebel and also to rewind. Two circles are at play in the very concept of revolting, of performing a full circle: one clockwise, one anti- clockwise. The hope, in the act of revolting, is that the clock does not return to its initial position: the hope is that in completing one circle we find that the situation has changed – revolt is not, or is not supposed to be, ‘tourism’! So two movements are at work in this project: the wish for Revolt to change every time, to become a different film, a different object, a different concept at every revolution and, at the same time, the act of rewinding the tapes in order to listen again, in order to take pleasure in the present from the gifts of the past. And Revolt will transform at each turn: like an old beloved record, it will accumulate spits and crackles and pops, the traces of past listens. At every revolution, it will become less perfect and at the same time more precious, bearing the marks of its continual resonance through time, bearing the signs of wonderful evenings. Upon those imperfect pleasures r e : v o l t returns, resists, insists.

r e : v o l t frames itself as response, and works in a logic of call and response. It calls out and it doesn’t know who will respond or how its sound will keep echoing through space and time. It doesn’t know what passions it will awake or reawaken, it doesn’t know how its language will be spoken, it doesn’t know what its future will be. It thrives on a joyful precariousness, on uncalculating generosity.

r e : v o l t is a relay, between generations, between countries, between cultures. From then to now, from here to there, from us to you... Made in Skopje – a building site for the past 50 years, a city in a constant state of flux, of becoming, of being rebuilt – it knows a few things about transformation. And it knows that it can offer something of that flux, something of the energy which comes with the fact of constantly changing, to any artist from any background. r e : v o l t invites the imagination of others to inhabit a Macedonian document because it is an invitation to think together, to be imaginative together, to take creative control and pleasure from disorientation. The games are open: revolt is a 1977 Macedonian film, and r e : v o l t can be anything you wish.

r e : v o l t is re-, but it is also post-. The post- places it in the present continuous: it implies that it comes after, but it also implies that it never ends. It is invested in remembering that archives are always also made up of phenomena that are unofficial, amateur, marginal because it searches for an unofficial, amateur, marginal filiation and affiliation. It is invested in remembering these phenomena because it is invested in maintaining: maintaining an avant-garde, maintaining an underground, keeping open the idea of the experimental. The film was made in the year zero of punk; our energy is post- punk, in as much as it creates and maintains an alternative culture for the present because it has faith in the future.

Revolts grow out of the most unlikely places: you never really know where, when, how or why they start. r e : v o l t wishes to keep that in mind, not only by exposing itself to being used wherever, whenever and by whoever, but also in inserting itself into unlikely contexts: r e : v o l t is curious, and it wants to go places. Its favourite locations are other people’s festivals, other people’s parties, other people’s projects. It is the uninvited guest who you end up talking to till dawn. It wants to get to know you.

Finally, Sidovski’s Revolt is about a group of friends. Wedded to reimagining the archive, this project does the opposite of what archives do: instead of making documents out of events, it wants to make events out of documents. There are few rules, but one of them is the presence of a live audience and the organization of a public event. Don’t we spend enough time with archival material in our private homes? The premise is this: a group of friends, an empty city, a hot summer day. Anything can happen!